immigration

Protecting and expanding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program would boost state and local public finances, according to a new report. While the human toll of aggressive deportation policies and inflammatory rhetoric play out in communities across the country, a less visible harm is being imposed on state and local finances. DACA helps young immigrants to more fully realize their human and economic potential, which in turn means more tax revenue for state and local governments. On the other hand, ending the program would erode state and local finances and crush Dreamers’ aspirations.

In North Carolina, DACA recipients contribute an estimated $58.5 million in state and local taxes, a figure which could increase by almost $21 million if all of the young people eligible for DACA enrolled in the program, and which means a $28 million decrease if DACA ends. Nationwide, enrolling everyone who meets the criteria for DACA could boost state and local tax revenues by $815 million.

DACA is a program designed to increase the educational attainment and economic productivity of young immigrants. A temporary work authorization allows DACA recipients greater access to higher education, employment opportunities, and higher wages. These newfound opportunities translate into higher tax revenue and economic growth. DACA shows what happens when Dreamers have the tools to succeed. Read more

While members of Congress seek to make the H-2A program cheaper and easier for employers by rolling-back worker protections, the US Department of Labor continues to kick bad-actor employers out of the program. This week the USDOL’s Wage and Hour office in Raleigh announced that they had debarred two farm labor contractors from the H-2A guestworker program. This is just the latest in a series of such announcements, which underscores the flaws in the H-2A program.

The H-2A program allows employers to bring in foreign guestworkers to work in agriculture for up to 10 months. By statute, H-2A visas are only supposed to be issued when importing foreign labor will not have an adverse effect on the wages and working conditions of the local workers doing the same kind of work. To that end, DOL has passed regulations which govern the test of the local labor market which employers must first do before being permitted to bring in visa workers.

Additional regulations govern how workers – both H-2A visa workers and U.S. workers – are treated on the job, including setting a minimum wage, a minimum hours guarantee, the requirement that employers provide free housing which meets minimum standards and that employers reimburse the foreign visa workers for their inbound transportation costs and the expense of obtaining their visa. The reimbursement requirement is important because visa workers usually arrive in the U.S. to begin working with significant debt, making it difficult for them to afford basic necessities, unlikely to complain about dangerous or illegal working conditions, and vulnerable to human trafficking as discussed in several publications (Close to Slavery, No Way to Treat a Guest) and articles (The New American Slavery: Invited to the U.S., Foreign Workers Find a Nightmare; “All You Americans Are Fired”).

This week’s announcement from the Raleigh USDOL office comes on the heels of similar announcements in April and May. Worldwide Staffing, LLC, another H-2A Labor Contractor, was debarred by USDOL in April for failing to reimburse employees for inbound expenses, owing wages, failing to provide adequate cooking facilities and overcharging for meals. In May, USDOL announced they had debarred Marisa Garcia-Pineda, an H-2A labor contractor, who owed $195,735 in backwages, had charged illegal recruitment fees, and failed to reimburse the workers, among other violations. That is all just from the last few months and there will be more this year. Kudos to USDOL, but these actions represent a very small fraction of the problem because they can only debar employers from the H-2A program in the most extreme cases.

Now a new op-ed in The News & Observer from Duke history professor William Chafe offers some historical perspective on the debate. As Chafe points out, such debates surrounded protests during the Civil Rights Movement.

From the op-ed:

When Donald Trump’s press secretary was asked to leave a restaurant because of the president’s policy of breaking up immigrant families, it was seen as a violation of “civility” — treating other citizens with politeness and respect.

But what happens when dedication to “civility” is used as a basis for suppressing protest? Is it necessary to insist on good manners in public and private before responding to demands that an unjust social policy be changed?

When four black students in Greensboro “sat in” at local lunch counters in 1960 to demand equal treatment, that was the position taken by local leaders. In the Greensboro Daily News, a liberal paper in the relatively moderate state of North Carolina, the editors declared that social protest was incompatible with “civility.”

“Somewhere,” the paper said, “a Southern community must find a way to deal with civilities as well as civil rights.” Such an answer “will not be found while the management is under the gun,” the paper contended; rather, social justice could only happen when “unimpeded by the threat of force.”

Yet the civil rights movement succeeded only because it insisted that racial justice take precedence over “civilities.” Through sit-ins, voting rights marches and mass demonstration, it disrupted the social order. Only then was the government compelled to respond — which it did with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968. If “civilities” took priority over movement activism, these events would never have occurred. Justice required breaking with civility.

More relevant — then and now — than the Greensboro paper’s definition of political reality was the injunction of Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, who said this in 1857:

Those who profess to favor freedom

And yet deprecate agitation

Are men who want crops

Without plowing the ground

They want rain without thunder and lightning

They want the ocean without the awful roar of it waters

Power concedes nothing without a demand

It never did, and it never will

Today, Douglass’ insight is more relevant than ever before. We are now more polarized as a nation than at any time since the Civil War. Yet just as a reliance on “civility” failed completely to address the demands of black Americans for equal rights in 1960, the same insistence on “civility” today — without ever addressing the depth of our racist assumptions about immigrant families and other minorities – is futile.

Direct demonstrations were essential to the gains achieved by the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Activist protest, such as we saw this past weekend, is just as essential today if we are to address the violation of immigrant rights and the break-up of immigrant families.

Yes, we should respect the right of any person to enjoy a meal in a public restaurant. That’s what the civil rights movement was all about.

But no, we should not use the argument of defending “civility” to deflect, denigrate or rule out of order mass protests against an immigration policy that contradicts all the values we celebrate on July 4. The only society that can be truly “civil” is one where everyone enjoys protection under the law, and where the values enunciated in our Declaration of Independence are the basis for our nation’s policies and the rhetoric of our national leaders.

Our nation has been made up of immigrants. My grandfather was the 14th child of a tailor from England. He came to America to seek a new life, and got a job as a night watchman at Harvard. His daughter, my mother, became a secretary at Harvard. I, in turn, became a student at Harvard. Three generations — and a story repeated in other immigrant families tens of thousands of times.

It is ironic that some commentators are using the need to protect “civility” in personal manners as an instrument for opposing protest against government policies. It would be far more relevant to remember Douglass’ words: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.”

In addition to the events at the U.S.-Mexico border, families currently residing in the United States are being separated in ICE raids, most recently in Ohio, North Carolina, and Tennessee. These, too, result in families being torn apart, have a similar negative impact on children, and are issues of concern to medical professionals, teachers, social workers and more. These traumatic experiences will continue for children whose families face the daily fear of deportation, and for the thousands of children who have already been separated from their families.